About 5,000 chemical weapons were recovered or destroyed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion but the Pentagon chose to keep the findings a secret, it has emerged. A major investigation by The New York Times has revealed that U.S. forces happened across hidden caches of warheads, shells and aviation bombs between 2004 and 2011 that had been sitting dormant since the early 1980s.
The dangerous weapons – most of them mustard agents in 155-millimeter artillery shells or 122-millimeter rockets – were developed by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, with hundreds of tons of chemicals created at any one time.
However the government chose not to release the information to the public because the findings did not support President George W. Bush’s rationale for war.
Bush had contended that Hussein was developing new chemical weapons capable of ‘mass destruction’.
However all the weapons found had been developed before 1991.
Admitting as such would be admitting the government was wrong.
Another reason for the cover-up, according to The Times, was that five of the six chemical weapons encounters in which soldiers were injured involved weapons that were designed in the US.
”’Nothing of significance” is what I was ordered to say,’ said Jarrod Lampier, a now-retired Army major who was present when forces found 2,400 nerve agent rockets in 2006 — the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war.
Soldiers were also loathe to report finding the caches.
Documenting chemical weapons added hours of extra work.
Chemical warfare specialists had to be called in, and waiting for them to arrive put coalition in precarious positions.
It also stopped them from destructing other explosives that were killing people every week.
‘I could wait all day for tech escort to show up and make a chem round disappear, or I could just make it disappear myself,’ one told The Times.
The mustard shells could be put in with other explosives that needed to be destructed and then detonated.
However, handling chemical weapons lead to many injuries, which were not taken seriously by military doctors at the time.
Many explosive ordnance disposal personnel were not aware that the shells they were handling contained chemicals, believing them to be regular old artillery.
At least 17 American military personnel and seven Iraqi police were sickened by poisons – usually sarin and mustard gases – since 2003.
Many of the shells would leak liquid during transportation, exposing the soldiers to the potentially-lethal fumes.
Symptoms would range from disorientation and nausea to blindness and huge, seething blisters.
Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of ‘wounds that never happened’ from ‘that stuff that didn’t exist’.
‘I love it when I hear, ‘’Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq”,’ he said.
‘There were plenty.’
Mailonline
UM– USEKE.RW
